


Teach Me to Hear the Mermaids Singing

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: serenity_santa, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:57:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theory ain't practice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teach Me to Hear the Mermaids Singing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for seraphcelene in serenity_santa 2005.
> 
> Thanks to florahart, kassrachel, and thistlerose for betaing, to mousapelli for the inspiration when I was stuck, and to angelgazing for listening. Title from "Song" by John Donne.

River likes Mal's hands -- they are long-fingered and strong; with those hands, he can fire a gun and pilot a ship and, when the need arises, cradle a girl like she's the most precious thing in the 'verse. She got hold of the security feed from the Maidenhead, has watched it over and over. Not the part where she beats everyone up (though she does occasionally entertain herself by watching the part where she knocked Jayne on his ass), but the part where Mal walks across the wreckage and lifts her up, carries her home. She wishes she hadn't slept through it.

She has seen him hug Kaylee, ruffle her hair, hold her hand. She watches him set a hand on Zoe's shoulder or elbow, the only touches Zoe will accept. He would give Zoe more, give her everything if she'd let him; he would let himself melt into Zoe, his strong right arm, until they were the same person, indivisible.

River tries not to be jealous of them, or of Inara, who he wants to touch, and can't. That unsatisfied want has turned sour and he chokes on it, needs something to leach it away. River thinks she can be that something, that some _one._ River _wants_ to be that someone, and she tries to figure out how to get him to want that, too. People are usually easy for her to read, to manipulate, but Mal is capable of surprising her, and she finds she likes that. She likes it a lot.

She sits in the co-pilot's chair and watches him. If she didn't already know how much he loves Serenity, she'd be able to tell by the way he touches her, firm and tender all at once. He doesn't have the skill Wash did, but Serenity responds, slowly but surely, to Mal's love and to his hands at her controls.

River loves Serenity, too, every gorram inch of her, down to the nuts and bolts holding the deck plates together, the soft whoosh of air in her vents and the steady hum of her engines, beating in River's blood like a drum, setting the rhythm of her heart, the pace of her hand between her thighs when she touches herself at night, trying to drown out the insistent pulse of Simon and Kaylee's lovemaking against her skin, and the overwhelming ache of Zoe's fierce grief in her heart.

River knows the theories and principles of flight -- she was trained at the Academy -- and when she sits at the helm, she can feel the knowledge in her fingertips. She watched Wash and now she watches the Captain (though she has stopped thinking of him as the Captain, lately, and now just thinks of him as Mal); she loves Serenity as much as Mal does, for many of the same reasons, and because of that Serenity responds to her touch, as well.

She is eager to learn from him, and despite all outward appearances, he is eager to teach her, to have someone look to him for guidance, someone who believes in him.

After Miranda, River finds him very easy to believe in.

"Theory ain't practice," Mal says to her the first time she flies to their rescue and cuts the angles a little too closely, making Serenity scream as she's pushed to the limit.

"I knew she'd hold together." She doesn't give him the math, knows he probably wouldn't understand most of it, though he's far from stupid. Knows he trusts her to know and understand it, which is the important thing.

"Maybe so. Still, don't want to push her further than she can stand." But he gives her a look that makes her warm inside, and she doesn't need to hear what he's thinking to know he's proud of her.

She nods. "Know your limits."

"Exactly." He smiles and her stomach gives a little flip. River is honest with herself -- she has to be, can't hide inside her own head from anything, least of all herself -- and she knows these feelings are beyond his limits, knows he'll probably run screaming at first, if she doesn't handle him carefully.

"She don't like it when you're rough with her," he says to her one day as they burst out of atmo and into the black. They're not being chased, but Mal often flies like they are. River understands. She's the same. "But you have to be firm, make sure she knows who's in charge."

He leans over her, his hands warm and strong on hers; his breath ghosts over her ear, her cheek and she forces herself to act as normal as she can. She's been flying long enough that he doesn't really need to do this, but he does anyway, and she doesn't complain. It tells her maybe he's closer to letting her in than she thought. Her hands tremble beneath his, but she can blame that on the way Serenity vibrates from the strain of escaping gravity's clutch.

"You like being in control," she says, turning so her cheek grazes his, the quick scrape of stubble on her skin sending an unexpected and highly pleasurable shock through her. Her lips are millimeters from his, and when he speaks, his breath slips warm and moist over her lips. It's almost like she imagines kissing would be.

"Yeah," he mutters. He clears his throat, and she can practically feel the sound rumble up from his chest where it's pressed to the back of her chair, but then he straightens, hands slipping off hers as if he's just remembered he's touching her. "That's why I'm the captain."

She smiles up at him. "Can't control everything."

"No." He sits back in Wash's chair and stares out at the stars. "Wouldn't want to, if I could."

***

Four months after Miranda, Inara makes her choice, leaves Serenity for good. Only choice the Alliance has left her, if she wants to keep working as a Companion, and she can't bring herself to give it up. River knows this was inevitable, and she suspects Mal has always known, but Inara didn't quite, until now, and the leave-taking is tense and sad.

They share a drink afterward, Kaylee pouring out sake for all of them and raising a toast to Inara. River puts out two extra cups, libations for the dead. Mal nods when Kaylee hesitates before pouring into them, and River flashes a smile at him over the rim of her own glass. She drinks and nobody says a word, not even Simon, though she knows she probably shouldn't, with all the medication she's taking.

Simon and Kaylee drift away first, eager to get away from the wake for a love affair that never happened, the warped mirror of their own relationship. Jayne slips off to his bunk after a bit, to remember Inara in his own way; River tries not to think about that. She's getting better at ignoring things now that she has specific tasks to concentrate on. She has been trained to this kind of work -- flying and fighting, and doing both under the radar -- if not this kind of life, and though she knows he hates how it happened as much as she does, she also picks up Mal's unspoken gratitude that she fits so neatly into his crew.

Only she, Zoe and Mal are left, and Mal keeps drinking, soft clink of the bottle against the rim of the blue ceramic cup Kaylee had bought him for his birthday.

Zoe stands, puts a hand on his shoulder. He reaches up and covers it with his, and River wishes she were the one offering comfort. She doesn't say anything, but Zoe's not stupid, either; she's as good a reader of people as River's ever met, for someone who isn't psychic.

"Don't be doing anything foolish, Cap'n," she says, meeting River's gaze calmly. River can see some amusement in her dark eyes, but she knows Zoe's not laughing at her so much as she's anticipating being able to tease Mal in the morning. "Got young, impressionable crew members on board."

Mal rolls his eyes. "River and me, we got an understanding between us." He raises his glass to her. "Don't we, darlin'?"

"That's what I'm afraid of," Zoe murmurs.

River shakes her head. "Won't be the substitute, the pale imitation, the rebound."

Zoe raises an eyebrow. "If you say so."

"Hey, stop talking 'bout me like I ain't even here," Mal says.

"Ain't talking 'bout you, sir."

"Oh. Well. All right then."

She and Zoe share an amused glance and then Zoe heads back to her bunk, lighter of heart than she's been in a long time.

River moves into the seat next to Mal, and pours herself another drink. "It's not good to drink alone," she tells him when he grabs her wrist to stop her.

"Not alone if you're here. You don't have to drink, too."

"Maybe I want to."

He leans in close, as if he's got a secret to share. She tilts toward him, so their shoulders touch. "I conjure you're gonna do what you want anyway," he says, "just like everyone else on this gorram boat, so I ain't gonna try and stop you."

"Good." She smiles and takes a drink, smooth burn in her chest and heat flaring under her skin. "Like swallowing a star."

"Yeah." He smiles and taps her nose, and she has to close her eyes because that's as heady as the sake. "Just like that." His voice is low, intimate, and she closes the distance between them, does exactly what she told Zoe she wouldn't.

His mouth is warm and wet and tastes of sake and bitter words he's forced himself to swallow too many times. His tongue is slick-rough against hers, and she feels like she is melting inside, nothing left but this overwhelming _want_. She gasps and reaches up to brush the tips of her fingers over his cheek, needing to touch him, to prove it's real and not just another product of her surgically altered brain. He grabs her wrist again, and pulls away.

"My first kiss," she whispers before he can say anything to ruin the moment. That checks him. She knew it would.

"Not that I ain't flattered," he replies, voice low and gravelly, "but neither of us needs another thing to regret."

She stares at him for a long moment, lost in the blue of his eyes, ringing pupils wide and deep as the black, where she could drown if he'd let her.

" _Fangxin._ No more regrets," she says.

He gives a soft huff of laughter, edged with bitterness. "Wouldn't that be nice?"

"Come on," she says, rising, daring to slip her hand around his upper arm, warm and strong beneath her fingers. "Walk me to my door, like a proper gentleman."

"Ain't no proper gentleman," he replies, but stands steadily, and with her own perceptions clouded by sake and hormones, she can't tell if he's not as drunk as she thinks he is or if he is and is trying to hide it.

She smiles. "Let's pretend."

He shakes his head but doesn't protest. They walk in silence, arm-in-arm, Serenity's familiar hum surrounding them, until they reach her room. The breathy moans emanating from behind Simon's door make her blush, and Mal looks everywhere but at her when he says, "G'night, _baobei_." He hesitates for a moment, then presses a soft kiss to her forehead. "Sweet dreams." He walks away, remarkably steady on his feet for a man as far gone with drink as he is, and she presses her hand to her mouth as if she can lock in the memory of his lips against hers.

She doesn't dream, that she can remember, but she floats gently into sleep for once, imagining a soft, warm future for the both of them.

***

Without Inara on board, River finds Mal relaxes slightly, doesn't always hold himself as if waiting for the next blow to fall.

They don't speak of the kiss, but he touches her more now, a hand on her shoulder when he comes and goes from the bridge, the light squeeze of his fingers saying more than any words could, and he laughs at her jokes, which is more than Simon does, sometimes.

Her nightmares are less frequent now, but they still come with some regularity, and when she wakes, heart racing and body sheened with cold sweat, she's usually lucid enough to come to the bridge, sit in her chair (she is the co-pilot now, though Serenity will never have another pilot, not like Wash; Mal is the Captain, but the seat he sits in is still Wash's, and they all know it, respect it) and look out at the black, far less scary than the kaleidoscope of brightly colored thoughts and emotions her brain tries to drown her in sometimes. She doesn't like to bother Simon, doesn't want to intrude on his time with Kaylee, feels a small ache when she sees them curled up two together instead of one alone.

Sometimes Mal is there as well, for similar reasons. His nightmares are not nearly as much _blood-pain-fire_ as she would have expected, but more _silence-guilt-despair_ , the bodies piling up, eyes wide and accusing, as he fails to save his platoon, his crew, his family.

They let the low thrum of Serenity's engines lull them into peace, the silence between them companionable, not accusatory.

One night, hovering on the dark side of Athens, they watch a meteor shower together. The meteors hit the atmosphere and flare bright, falling stars on which River makes her wish. Without thinking too much about what she's doing, she rises out of her seat and eases her way into his lap.

"'Teach me to hear the mermaids singing,'" she whispers, winding her arms around his neck and kissing him. His mouth is soft and slick and tastes of green tea, and she wants to drown in the way it makes her feel. She pushes closer, knees slipping open to cradle his hips, breasts pressed to his chest, feeling his heart match itself to hers, breathing the air he exhales. She wants to melt with him and be reborn as something new, something whole, herself, and yet linked to him.

He pulls away, breathing heavily, lips red and shining in the low light, and for once his eyes hide nothing from her.

"You're too young--"

"I'm old enough," she interrupts. "Old enough to kill is old enough to love."

He shakes his head, tries again with, "You're looking to replace Simon, now that Kaylee is taking up all his time."

She runs her lips along his jaw, tasting sweat and skin and stubble. "Never wanted to do this with Simon," she whispers against his ear, rolling her hips gently.

He swallows hard. "All the crazy ideas you've had, _baobei_ , this one's at the top of the list."

"My crazy ideas work. S'why you keep me around."

He has no answer to that except to tangle his hands in her hair and pull her into another kiss, fiercer, hungrier, deliberate this time. Acting instead of reacting. She touches his face, his hair, runs her fingers along his jaw, feels the staccato beat of the pulse at the base of his throat. She hears soft, needy sounds and realizes they're coming from her own throat. When he shifts forward, she feels the helm at her back. Her startled, "Oh!" reminds them both that anyone could walk in at any time, and maybe that's Serenity's way of warning them someone might.

She can feel Mal withdrawing as he leans back in the chair, starting to think of all the reasons they shouldn't do this, ignoring all the reasons why they should. She cups his face, thumbs tracing the arches of his cheeks, the hollows under his eyes, learning him the way she's learned everything else the 'verse has tried to teach her.

"Don't," she says, fingers to his lips. "Don't worry. Hurts me more if you shut me out. Hurts you, too."

He laughs, a soft kiss on her fingers. "Maybe I ain't ready to let anyone in."

"Not just anyone," she whispers in his ear. "Me." She rises gracefully, trailing her hands along his chest and then bending at the waist to kiss him one last time. "Rivers know where to flow."

They both sleep better that night, and for many nights after. They share kisses when no one else is around, and slowly ease toward more.

They are quiet, furtive, though she is not ashamed. She doesn't feel shame and wishes she could free him from it, as well, when he whispers her name against her skin, and she can feel his thoughts, his fears, _taking advantage, just a girl, doesn't know better, ought to stop._ She tries to banish those doubts with her mouth, her hands, her body, because that means more to him than words. They've both been lied to too often to trust without proof, though they both carry secret faiths within their hearts -- hers in him, and his in Serenity, a closed system where nothing can be lost.

She likes to touch him secretly when the others are around, sliding her foot up his leg under the table at breakfast, pressing her thigh against his when they ride the mule. It's like a game of hide and seek, and it adds an extra thrill to every touch and kiss, to imagine they're fooling everyone else.

Of course, Zoe knows. River doesn't think Mal can keep secrets from her, though he tries. Zoe watches him with fond amusement. Kaylee suspects, if only because River is deliberately careless, wants to see how she'll react, and lets her catch a glimpse of the marks Mal left on her neck the night before. Kaylee's eyes widen as she draws her conclusions, but River can't see any censure in them. Simon chooses not to notice, and Jayne can't see further than the end of his own John Thomas, and wouldn't care if he did.

River knows the clinical terminology for what she and Mal are doing, the antiseptic words descended from dead languages to describe body parts and positions, but until he opened up this world of touch to her, she didn't _know_ what it would feel like.

Loving Mal, touching him, is like flying. "Firm," she says with a laugh, wrapping her fingers around him and stroking, "yet gentle." He makes a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and a moan, which sends another wave of heat through her. She feels beautiful, powerful, _wanted_ , when she's with him, and she feels _good_.

And when he touches her, it's the same as and yet completely different from her own fingers sliding over wet folds of skin and soft brush of hair, orders of magnitude more intense. Theory, she learns yet again, is not practice. She has so much to learn, and she wants to learn it all. He's a surprisingly patient teacher.

"You sure?" he asks about every new thing they do, and she is.

" _Dangran_. Wouldn't be here," in Mal's bunk, lying on sheets that smell of him and now of her, of both of them together and this new thing they have, and always, always of the recycled air with its tang of metal and engine grease, the scent of Serenity herself, "if I weren't."

He slides his hands up the ticklish skin of her thighs, and she is already breathless with anticipation, hips rising to meet his hand. His touch undoes her, heat and need and pleasure spiraling high and tight inside her, and nothing matters but his hands on her body.

" _Renci de Shangdi,_ " she gasps, unable to catch her breath and not even sure she wants to, if dying feels like _this_.

He stops, concerned, his gaze never leaving her face, and she wraps her fingers around his wrist, lifts her hips again.

"Please," she manages, though she's not sure she can take it, thinks maybe she will shake apart, like a ship whose buffer panels can't take the strain of escape velocity.

"You're the one in charge," he says. And she trusts him to give her that control, though she has no conception of her own limits.

She growls in frustration. "Right now, stopping is not even an option."

He laughs delightedly, awful man, bad as his name, and kisses her, lips and tongue speaking this silent language they share, saying more than all the words he can't bring himself to speak aloud.

"Patience, little albatross," he murmurs against her lips when he finally does speak, teasing her with the brush of his thumb. He slides his mouth down her body to use his tongue _there_ and...

With a hoarse moan, she comes apart, too much feeling to be contained in her skin, light and heat, like a white dwarf going supernova -- for an endless, too brief moment, she is radiant, her pleasure illuminating the 'verse.

She drifts back to find him leaning on an elbow, grinning down at her as if he's just come up with a unified field theory that can actually be proved.

"Mermaids?" he asks, running a finger over her eyebrows, then down the slope of her nose, thumb tracing the curve of her mouth. She can taste herself on his skin, salty and sharp, and it should be strange, but she thinks she kind of likes it.

"Singing," she confirms, stretching contentedly. She feels whole, more herself than she ever has before. As she falls asleep curled up warm and tight against him, his smug grin the last thing she sees before she closes her eyes, she realizes she never wants this feeling to stop.

end

**Author's Note:**

>  _Fangxin_ = Don't worry  
>  _Dangran_ = Of course.  
>  _Renci de Shangdi_ = merciful god


End file.
